HHS Dictates What Forms Of Payment Insurers Will Take

Does anyone remember, during the time when the Democrat controlled House and Senate were looking to pass Obamacare, if the notion that the legislation made any determination as to what forms of payment would be required to purchase health insurance was mentioned? Yeah, me neither

(NJ.com) The U.S.Department of Health and Human Services last week proposed a new rule that would require issuers of health insurance plans to accept different types of payments so that individuals without a bank account will still be able to purchase health insurance once the Affordable Care Act takes effect in January.

This is based on the issue that approximately 27% of uninsured Americans (a ton of which are illegal aliens and non-citizens) do not have checking accounts, which I suppose leads into these people getting their federal tax credits or something. The article doesn’t say, nor does that “proposed rule” (BTW, that document, which covers several different topics, is another 253 pages of rule-making), what the big bruhaha about this is.

The federal government’s report comes less than one month after Parsippany-based tax firm Jackson- Hewitt released its own report entitled “Uninsured + Unbanked = Unenrolled: How Health Insurance Companies Could Exclude One in Four Eligible Americans from ACA Health Coverage and What the Federal Government Can Do to Stop It,”

What that article alludes to, as does Clark Howard, is the notion that insurance companies typically require consumers to pay their monthly premiums through a checking account. Why? For one thing, they’d like guaranteed payment. However, I’m sure they’d take cashier’s checks and money orders, which are as good as cash. The Jackson-Hewitt article also calls this “discriminatory” towards Blacks and Hispanics, ie, raaaaacist.

That all said, one has to love the notion that the federal government, in this case Health and Human Services, can dictate what forms of payment private companies must take. Doesn’t seem like Liberals are interested in allow some entities to make their own “choice”, eh?

But, where did this power come from? It certainly wasn’t in the 2000+ page Obamacare legislation specifically, nor even in a roundabout manner. It comes from the huge amount of mentions along the lines of “the director of HHS shall (may, can)”, giving the director of HHS the power to make it up as she goes along. Even forcing private businesses to take forms of payment they’d rather not.

But, then, this is the same HHS will force religious organizations to violate their consciences and violates the 1st Amendment regarding the religious clause.